"Significant functional and intelligence deficiencies" contributed to the Israeli police failure to prevent and stop a wave of Arab Israeli riots in May 2021, according to the damning report issued last week by Israel's state watchdog.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Well, that was painfully obvious to anybody who lived through or followed the riots last year! It is unsurprising to anybody who has followed the skyrocketing trajectory of Arab and Bedouin lawlessness and the nationalistic radicalization of some Arab Israelis over the past two decades.
What we really need, much more than a comptroller's report on police fecklessness, is a national plan to root out the sources that are fueling extremism and violence in parts of the Arab Israeli community.
Just a reminder: Over 500 violent riots rocked Israel during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021), killing three, injuring hundreds and leading to more than 3,000 arrests (including about 200 Israeli Jews). The main streets in mixed Arab-Jewish cities became battlefields.
It was so bad, and the expectation that more such riots are likely in future conflicts is so realistic, that the IDF has marked Jewish-Arab clashes as a strategic scenario of concern that impacts its battle plans.
In other words, aside from the expectation that thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones will be launched at Israeli cities from Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights in a next war with Hezbollah and/or Hamas, Israel now must worry that major traffic arteries could be impeded in places where Arab Israeli extremists are out rioting.
Ostensibly, Arab Israelis have gradually but inexorably moved to acceptance and even preference of life in Israel. Recent polls suggest that 71% of Arab Israelis feel that Israel is a good place to live; 68% prefer to live in Israel than in other countries; and 60% even says they feel Israel to be a home and a homeland.
When asked whether they wanted to be transferred to an Arab government in the West Bank (as Avigdor Lieberman proposed in his transfer plan, more than a decade ago), Arabs of the "triangle" in northern Israel prefer by a 10-to-1 ratio to remain Israeli citizens.
Indeed, previous Israeli governments (both Likud and Yamina-Yesh Atid) governments have invested hundreds of millions of shekels to integrate Arabs into Israel's burgeoning high tech and other profitable sectors. Last year's budget allocated NIS 29.5 billion ($9.2 billion) for infrastructure, education, and employment in Arab communities over five years, along with billions more in initiatives to fight crime and increase access to health care.
But there are counter trends that conflict with Israel's welcome efforts, especially a growing rejection among Arab Israelis of Israel's Jewish nature and a move to systematically subvert state sovereignty and governability.
Last year's widespread violence clearly was driven by Arab criminal and Islamist elements and coordinated with Hamas. They purposefully inflamed the masses and rallied otherwise peaceful Arab Israelis for pogrom-style rioting and lynching. After all, why did last year's riots cease as soon as the Gaza hostilities ended?
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs wrote last year that alongside a desire to benefit from integration economically and sociologically, there is a deep-rooted ideological consciousness among Arab Israelis that rejects Zionism and the Jewish right to a homeland in Israel.
"There has been a resurgence of the 'Nakba' (disaster) narrative and the demand for an Arab 'right of return' in the fullest-imaginable magnitude – among Israeli Arabs. These demands have moved from refugee camp residents and descendants on the margins of Palestinian society into the mainstream," he finds.
Indeed, a public opinion survey conducted earlier this year by the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a conservative Israeli defense and security forum founded by ex-generals and intelligence officials, found that, as a matter of principle, 75% of Arab Israelis do not recognize any Jewish "right" to a sovereign state in the Land of Israel.
Hostile outside actors like the UN and Amnesty International capitalize on Arab Israeli rioting and Bedouin complaints to "prove" how discriminatory Israel is, warns Kuperwasser. And the Palestinian Authority leverages Amnesty's "apartheid" charge both to egg on Arab Israeli radicals and to advance Ramallah's campaign to criminalize Israel in international legal institutions.
The bottom line: It is high time to impose more obligations and responsibilities on this country's Arab minority, while investing in their advancement too; and to ramp-up intelligence gathering and enforcement capabilities to crush radicals and criminals. Not to punish Arab Israelis, but to encourage their good citizenship and better integration, and to rule effectively. This will be a painful but long overdue process.
